


The Testing

by Ruusverd



Series: Echoes of the Fall AU [29]
Category: Echoes of the Fall - Adrian Tchaikovsky, Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:54:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26252239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruusverd/pseuds/Ruusverd
Summary: Before Ciri can be a fully-fledged Wolf, there's one more challenge she needs to overcome.
Series: Echoes of the Fall AU [29]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1863010
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	The Testing

**Author's Note:**

> This one was born from an “oh shit” moment when I’d already written the whole climax and then realized I’d forgotten a critical point of Wolf culture that Geralt wouldn’t be able to weasel out of. It was supposed to be a whole mini-arc with several installments, but once I cut out everything that wasn't working it ended up being just one. If I ever manage to get the fleshed-out versions of any of it to cooperate with me I might post them later once the chronological parts are done. I think there are only two or three left to tie up the general plot, though I still plan to do individual non-chronological flashbacks or timestamps once that's finished.

On the day that marked the end of autumn and the beginning of winter came the Testing, when young Wolves who had gained their shapes during the past year were officially welcomed to the Wolf’s people as adults, at least in name if not in practice. All children born in the Jaws of the Wolf were Tested, so Ciri would have to undergo this rite of passage if she ever hoped to be a huntress in her own right instead of just being Geralt White Wolf’s pup. There was no way to truly _fail_ the Testing short of Stepping to something other than a wolf, so Geralt reluctantly agreed that he and his brothers would take Ciri to be Tested with the children of the Many Mouths.

The Tests themselves weren’t that difficult. They couldn’t be, since the ones being Tested were children between the ages of ten and fourteen. It merely involved running a course filled with obstacles that forced the youngsters to Step back and forth to get past them. Beaters would come behind, throwing rocks, sticks, and rotten produce at each triallist as they ran, and carried staves to ‘encourage’ any who ran too slowly, but serious injuries were rare. The worst the young generally had to fear was humiliation from some embarrassing fumble in front of their tribe.

The Wolves practiced with Ciri all through the autumn, building a makeshift course on their training ground and letting Ciri run it until they were confident she’d be able to manage any type of obstacle the priests might set up. Thanks to Yennefer’s tutelage, Ciri knew she was already far ahead of most children her age at keeping hold of her Stepped shape. The only real difficulty was relearning the size and capabilities of her new form. The ashen wolf was faster and more agile than her lioness had been, but it was also much smaller and lacked the type of claws that would let her climb steep surfaces easily.

The rest of the tribe often wandered by to watch Ciri train, particularly when the Wolves had just changed the course, not wanting her to get too used to a set pattern. They would stand at the edge of the training ground and yell out encouragement and occasional suggestions. Ciri appreciated the suggestions on getting past the obstacles, but she wished they wouldn’t suggest ways for making the course _harder._ Lem’s contributions sounded particularly nasty, though she swore up and down they were genuine training techniques used by the Laughing Men for their own version of the Testing. Ciri was almost positive Hyenas didn’t actually make their children swing on ropes across pits filled with flaming oil, if nothing else it would be a tremendous waste of oil, but the Wolves simply rolled their eyes and ignored Lem so she supposed it didn’t matter.

She wanted to start learning to hunt with the others instead of just practicing with wooden barriers, but the older Wolves insisted that she focus for now on the skills that would be required for the Testing. She begged, pleaded and whined for them to let her come along every time they left the village, but their response didn’t change. There would be plenty of time for hunting after the Testing was over, they said. Even Geralt, who usually couldn’t resist her pleading, said hunters didn’t join the pack on hunts until after the Testing, and if they were doing things the Wolf way they might as well be consistent.

She’d tried sneaking after them and had been caught and sent back almost immediately. She’d tried sitting Stepped at the edge of the village and howling sad, lonely wolf-songs at the sky the whole time they were gone, to be sure they could hear how abandoned she was, but the rest of the tribe had quickly let her know _the_ _ir_ ears didn’t deserve to be punished because she was angry at the Wolves. She’d even tried asking Milva to teach her instead, hoping it would make Geralt jealous. The Hawk had simply nodded seriously and begun explaining how to spot prey from the air and just the right way to angle one’s wings for the ideal hunting stoop, which didn’t do Ciri any good at all and just made Geralt laugh.

It seemed stupid for the Wolves to completely omit hunting and fighting skills from their Testing, but Coen said it was because there was only one Test for all the Wolf’s children, future hunters and future hearth-keepers both. Only the former would be taught to fight and hunt, but _all_ young Wolves had to prove they could Step to a wolf and use their other shape easily. That made a sort of sense, but Ciri still thought it was stupid.

When the last days of autumn arrived, Geralt and his brothers packed up and set off with Ciri for the Testing. The rest of the family had wanted to come along, but the Wolves insisted that descending on the Many Mouths with a whole warband of different shapes on the Wolf’s most sacred day would not go over well, nor would it help to prove Ciri a true daughter of the Wolf.

Ciri looked around with wide eyes when they arrived the evening before the Testing. She’d lived so long in their mostly-empty village, so the village of the Many Mouths seemed to be _overflowing_ with people. She was used to her father and uncles, so the lean, scarred hunters didn’t frighten her even when their voices got loud and they tussled roughly with each other. The haltered Deer and Boar thralls and the grim priest with his flint-studded staff and his robe covered in tiny bones were strange and upsetting, even though the older Wolves had told her ahead of time what to expect.

When the morning of the Testing arrived, Ciri stood with a score of other children at the start of the course. She felt a bit out of place, a lone Plains girl next to so many northern children. She was used to not looking like most of her tribe, but the warband’s fairly even mix of southern, Plains, and northern people meant she _wasn’t_ used to being the only one who was different.

She knew it wouldn’t matter once they Stepped, her wolf would look the same as the others’ and that was what mattered. All the children were too nervous to care what she looked like, anyway. Not scared of failure, everyone knew no one ever failed the Testing, but afraid of making some clumsy mistake and embarrassing themselves and their families in front of the whole tribe. She felt like the Wolf himself was watching them, waiting in case one of them proved not to be his after all.

The priest in his bone-covered robe walked in front of the group of children, eyes briefly settling on Ciri before he singled out a girl of the Many Mouths instead. The first half-dozen hopefuls stumbled through the course clumsily, and Ciri realized that they’d never run a course like this before, not even a makeshift one like she had practiced on at home. All of these obstacles had been freshly set up that morning, and while the grass of the training ground was well-trampled, there were no paths worn where almost two dozen children might have run the same path over and over in the recent past.

She wondered if her family had been breaking some kind of rule by letting her train against these sorts of challenges ahead of time, or if a full tribe simply couldn’t afford to have their whole training ground monopolized by such a large course for months each fall. She suspected Geralt wouldn’t have cared if it _was_ against the rules. He thought the Testing was stupid and just wanted her to have it over and done with as quickly as possible. Ciri didn’t think it was quite fair to the other children, but since none of them were really competing against each other she supposed it wasn’t really cheating.

She was relieved when the next half-dozen managed the course much more easily, having watched the ones who went before and learned from their mistakes. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too obvious that she had an advantage. She told herself not to be overconfident. She didn’t much care about impressing the Many Mouths, but she didn’t want to embarrass her father in front of them. They hadn't said as much to her, but she knew it was important that he not look weak here.

Bored of watching the same course repeated, her attention had started to drift when a boy from one of the smaller villages in the Many Mouths’ Shadow was hit in the shoulder by a rock and lost his balance as he was climbing over a short wall. He fell heavily with a thump and a shocked scream on the other side. The boy got to his feet and kept running before the beaters could catch up with their staves, but he moved awkwardly, holding his clearly broken arm against his chest and his corresponding paw above the ground. His waiting family greeted him at the end of the course with enthusiastic praise nonetheless, all smiles and excitement as they ushered him away. Ciri hoped they were taking him to have his arm treated, as none of his gathered relatives acted like they’d even noticed.

 _Well,_ Ciri thought, _If falling and breaking your arm isn’t embarrassing as long as you get up and keep going, I suppose I don’t have too much to worry about. Unless I fall and break both._

Rattled, the next few triallists were more timid, either hiding too much behind the slightly tougher skin of their Stepped form or unable to consistently hold on to that form at all. Still, they all made it to the end of the course, and even the ones who had the most trouble Stepped to Wolves and nothing else, so they passed the Test and were greeted as adults by their families on the other side.

Only a handful of children were left by the time the priest indicated Ciri with his flint-studded staff and she moved to the beginning of the course, taking deep breaths to settle her nerves. Her eyes flicked over to Geralt and her uncles, who had moved to the far side of the field and were waiting to meet her, then she focused on the first obstacle and braced herself.

The moment the priest gave the signal to start she dropped to a wolf’s paws and took off at a dead sprint, hoping to distance herself from the beaters. Even if she hadn’t practiced on a similar course, she’d watched enough of the other children to know what the best way of passing each barrier would be, and she wanted to be done before there was much chance of being struck and hurt by something the beaters threw.

She dove through the narrow hole of the first barrier, hearing a thud as something heavy hit the wood beside her. She ran the length of the narrow beam on human feet, nearly losing her balance when a vegetable she didn’t try to identify hit her bare shoulder, but managing to right herself before she fell. She ran towards the short wall the boy had been knocked from on human feet, using a trick she’d learned from Coen to launch herself into the air with her stronger human thigh muscles, then Step in midair to let her smaller, lighter form carry her over the wall, thus avoiding having to perch like a target at the top as she climbed over.

She ducked, jumped and climbed through the rest of the course, feeling several missiles hit her back and legs but nothing that felt like she’d been injured, and almost before she realized it she was crashing into Geralt’s arms at full speed, and the four of them were cheering for her and congratulating her, shoving gifts into her hands that she couldn’t spare the attention to look at.

They took her away to clean the vegetable mush off and check to make sure she hadn’t gotten injured without realizing it, then she shrugged into a clean shift and they returned to the crowd in time to see the last boy finish the course. Then the Wolves began to celebrate in earnest, the excited new ‘adults’ howling and thundering between and around the longhouses with their families running beside them, only stopping to engage in brief mock-battles.

Ciri looked pleadingly at Geralt and he Stepped instead of answering, running a few steps and then looking back at her with a wag of his tail. With a grin she Stepped and ran after him. As the five of them joined the river of Wolves, Ciri felt the Wolf running with them. _Mine,_ his voice said in her ear, _Mine._

Abruptly she understood what Geralt meant when he said the tribes had everything wrong. The Wolf wasn't a kind or gentle god and he didn’t often help, but neither was he pointlessly cruel. He didn’t care about sacrifices or silly ordeals. She'd felt the Wolf's eyes on the Testing earlier, but then he’d just been watching, waiting for failure. This, this horde of his people running together in fierce joy, _this_ was what had drawn him near, this was what made him _proud_ _._

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I usually have the problem of my writing turning into nothing but dialogue and now I've somehow produced a thing with no dialogue at all, so I'm curious to know if it works.


End file.
